Company
InfoBeans
Timeline
8 months
My Role
Design Lead
Responsibilities
Market Research
User Research
Design Direction
Visual Design
Prototyping
User Testing
Overview
A billion-dollar luxury real estate group in Dubai sought to transform its property management app, which, despite its rich feature set, felt overwhelming and unintuitive for its diverse user base. High-net-worth individuals, tenants, and property managers struggled with complex workflows, buried features, and a rigid, one-size-fits-all interface.
Through research, iterative design, and close collaboration with stakeholders, we redesigned the app to be intuitive, personalized, and seamlessly aligned with the luxury experience expected in high-end real estate. This wasn’t just a visual refresh—the navigation, information architecture, and overall user experience were reimagined to make property management effortless.
Designed & Ready – Just Not Live (Yet)
Although shifting business priorities delayed development, the redesigned app stands as a strong example of how research-driven design and close collaboration can solve complex UX challenges.
Main Goals
Enhance User Experience & Interface: Create a sophisticated yet user-centric app with seamless and intuitive functionality.
Boost User Engagement: Optimize workflows to simplify property management tasks, increasing user satisfaction and reducing frustration.
When Luxury meets
Usability Friction
For high-end property owners and tenants, managing real estate should be effortless. Yet, the flagship app felt more like an obstacle than a convenience. A multi-property investor described it best:
"I just want to check payments and approve maintenance requests, but every time I open the app, I feel lost."
Despite having a broad range of features, users found the app cumbersome, confusing, and inefficient. Many preferred visiting physical service centers over navigating the app—a critical issue for a digital-first experience.
Research, Discovery
& Direction
To ensure informed design decisions, we conducted extensive on-site research in Dubai, focusing on real user experiences:
Stakeholder Workshop Sessions
Conducted multiple interactive sessions to align all key stakeholders on the project goals, success criteria, and user needs. These workshops helped define clear priorities and ensure a unified vision for the redesign.
Journey Mapping
Mapped out the full user experience to identify critical pain points and inefficiencies. By visualizing each step in the property management process, we pinpointed opportunities for streamlining and enhancing usability.
User Interviews
Engaged directly with property owners, tenants, and managers to uncover real-world frustrations. These insights validated key issues such as the need for faster payments, better booking systems, and more intuitive workflows.
Competitor Analysis
Analyzed top-performing real estate management apps to benchmark industry best practices. We identified strengths to leverage and gaps that our redesign could address, ensuring a competitive and cutting-edge solution.
Key Issues Identified
Complex Navigation
Essential features were buried under multiple menus, making tasks unnecessarily difficult.
Limited Engagement
Overloaded screens led to decision fatigue, causing users to disengage.
Lack of Personalization
The app failed to adapt to different user roles (owners, tenants, managers, investors).
Inefficient Workflows
Routine tasks like payments and booking amenities took too many steps.
User Centric Redesign
Understanding our users was key to designing an experience that truly worked for them. We created proto-personas to capture the different ways people interacted with the app, highlighting their expectations:
Ali Hashemi, 42
Multi-Property Owner & Investor
Needs an efficient way to manage multiple properties, payments, and approvals in one place.
Lauren McGrath, 38
Luxury Tenant
Wants quick access to amenities, visitor management, and payments without complexity.
Ahmed Al-Sayed, 29
Property Manager
Requires easy tools for handling approvals, maintenance requests, and tenant interactions.
Emma Johnson, 30
Prospective Buyer/Tenant
Needs a frictionless experience for browsing, virtual tours, and scheduling visits.
While different users had unique priorities, tasks like payments, bookings, and maintenance requests overlapped. By identifying these shared interactions, we created a more unified and efficient system.
We prioritized user insights and feature requests to enhance the app's usability, ensuring the final design was both impactful and intuitive.
Management
App
A seamless property management experience with more than just visual improvements; it consists on intuitive interactions that meet user needs.
Optimizing Key User Flows
An experience designed to be seamless and effortless, to optimize critical user flows by eliminating unnecessary friction, simplifying interactions, enhancing efficiency.
Handover
The handover process involves multiple steps, including signing documents, scheduling maintenance visits, and fulfilling requirements before move-in. We streamlined this process into a centralized checklist, allowing owners and tenants to track pending tasks in one place. This feature provides a clear overview of what still needs to be completed before receiving property keys.
Improved transparency and efficiency, reducing delays and ensuring a smoother transition for new property owners and tenants.
Booking Amenities & Services
We streamlined the booking process, enabling users to reserve amenities and schedule services in simple steps. The one-tap booking system, and smart recommendations based on past behavior, and instant confirmation reduced the effort required to manage bookings.
60% faster task completion, increasing engagement and reducing frustration for tenants.
Managing Multiple Properties & Payments
A centralized payment hub now provides an at-a-glance view of outstanding payments, enabling property owners to complete transactions effortlessly. With saved payment methods and an integrated transaction log, users can handle all financial aspects in one place.
Significantly reduced time spent on financial management, increasing user retention and satisfaction.
Validation
& Key Takeaways
Using an with weekly design sprints and usability testing, we continuously refined the experience. Through usability testing, we confirmed that streamlined navigation and role-based experiences significantly boosted task efficiency and engagement.
"This feels much more premium and clean - now I can actually find what I need without searching endlessly."
Key Learnings & Business Decisions
Despite the overwhelmingly positive feedback for the redesign, it was not implemented due to a shift in business priorities. However, the insights gained from this project continue to inform future UX strategies. This experience reinforced several key UX lessons:
User research is essential
Understanding pain points upfront ensures meaningful design decisions.
Complex systems need structured simplicity
Balancing rich functionality with ease of use is key to adoption.
Not all great designs go live
Yet, the methodologies and insights remain valuable for future projects.
A great UX strategy is timeless
It isn’t just about launching, it’s about designing meaningful experiences that stand the test of time.
NEXT PROJECT
Accelerating Innovation with
Generative AI
Expona.io